Warlocks is DYNAMIC. Warlocks is dynamic in a way that few other games are. I always hear talk about "goals" and "setting up," but that's spurious. While you certainly don't want to play aimlessly, the game is wholly reactive; the minute you forget this, let your ego slip in and say "I want to do X" your opponent has the advantage.
Your spellflow should be plastic, that is, malleable. Your opponent's spellflow is also malleable, and you win the game by persuading him -- sometimes through force, but usually through ruse and implication -- to have his spellflow proceed in a fashion that is situationally inferior to yours. While there is a small psychological element to Warlocks, this persuasion is largely logical. Your opponent makes decisions based on the same things you do, spellflow and environmental factors. Usually, the game comes down to who can better see, understand, and take advantage of the possibilities that lie in the spellflow.
Psychology enters into things at intervals, when logic fails. These are the moments that make or break games between two closely-matched players, yet the recursive nature of the decisions involved makes it very difficult to settle on one course of action as wiser than another.
"The emphasis often centres on tricking the opponent into committing to a response while keeping your spellflow sufficiently fluid to continuously alter the threat... it becomes an exercise in trickery, where overcommitting in either attack or defence can be fatal."
-- Taliesin
Attacker: DFFD Defender: ..WPThe attacker may want to call off the bolt and switch to another attack, like DPP -- "dummying" the bolt. But the defender knows this too, so he is going to be tempted to dummy the counterspell. What could happen here?
| Attacker: DFFDD | Attacker: Dummy | |
|---|---|---|
| Defender: WPP | Nothing | Attacker gains initiative |
| Defender: Dummy | Attacker hits for 5 | Nothing |
This is a simplification; there may be other factors affecting who gets initiative, and the "Nothing" results may actually be very far from nothing. But in general, this decision point favors the attacker. That's the balancing factor for counterspell's brevity.
So this is where the psychological factor comes in. More than that, though, this is where strategy comes in. The more sophisticated your understanding of what matters when and how much ("strategic valuation"), the more precise your decisions will be when dealing with decision points -- the vast majority of which are far less obvious than DFFDD/WPP. You will still win some and lose some on an individual basis, but over time, superior strategists will gain more and lose less from a given decision point.
"It's all trade-offs, and anyone with a working knowledge of the game and the nerve for wild gambles can defeat someone much better than them by that gambling - not always, but at least sometimes."
-- Taliesin
The most consistent way to do this is with monsters, since it raises the stakes for your opponent but (usually) not for you in everything that happens. The apparent drawback to having a monster, which is the targetting ambiguity it creates, making it harder to defend against your opponent's attacks, is not a drawback at all (so long as you defend the monster properly) -- you can continue to launch attacks against your opponent and with the monster there, you are likely to get something through if they go on the offensive.
To create these situations (monsters or otherwise) requires having initiative, and it also requires an intimate knowledge both of dynamic spellflow and of strategic valuation. I can think of a few otherwise excellent players who just don't do this; they are skilled at terrorizing lesser warlocks but rarely win games against masters, and that's why.
But...
This is one of the reasons that games between comparable players are often tugs-of-war where initiative will pass back and forth continuously. However, as the concept of initiative implies, some positions are better than others regardless of the inevitable multiplicity of directions the game can go in. (Alternate reading: some moves will always suck worse than others :) So you've got to hang the sense of it -- answer present decision points as best you can while at the same time manipulating oncoming decision points to be as advantageously framed as possible.
(FWIW, Taliesin thinks this gesture-oriented approach is a poor way to analyze spellflow. He probably has the most sophisticated understanding of the game out of anyone alive, so this may be worth taking into account. I like this approach; your mileage may vary.)
| D | In terms of spellflow, D is significant mainly for DPP and DSF, short and situationally powerful disruptions that also have favorable departing sequences. Having a D on one hand can often provide useful options and threats. However, few common spells have D in the middle or end; it most commonly appears as a juncture in PSDF/PSDD. |
|---|---|
| S | S provides access to a set of useful, but situational spells, and is generally less flexible than D. Outside of Invisibility, it's an uncommon jumping-off point, as few spells end in S or provide an attractive S juncture. |
| W | An expensive gesture. Critically, W leads to Counter Spell and Protection, but that's about it. So it's very useful, but you are generally handing your opponent favorable decision points. W is relatively uncommon mid-spell, so often you will be paying for your initial W with an additional loss of initiative. |
|---|---|
| P | Versatile, but slow. P leads to the flexible PSD/PSF family as well as PPws and the vastly underrated PDWP. It appears within many common spells, like WPP. Between these disruption-resilient spells, shield spells, and the need to avoid surrendering, P will frequently play a central role in determining spellflow. However, what is often forgotten is that P is a slow gesture. The complete lack of three-gestured disruptions and defenses stemming from P means that using the P family at the wrong time can put you in a very vulnerable position. |
| F | F is extremely inflexible -- it leads into only three spells, two of which are clunky 5 gesture offensive spells, and the other of which is Paralysis, which only has F itself as a departure option. The only other spells ending in F are DSF and PSDF (elegantly flowing exceptions with their SFW and DF- segues). Many spells, however, have an F in the middle, a sort of awful hump that has to be gotten over. Whether or not you complete the spell, your opponent knows that you can't suddenly change direction with that hand -- and that can be a great disadvantage. |
|---|---|
| C/C | Clapping is often compared to casting Anti-Spell on yourself. There are some situations where clapping will not completely destroy your spellflow and your ability to react to your opponent (e.g., while invisible). However, before you clap, consider very carefully the different directions your opponent's spellflow might take. Clapping leaves you defenseless against the bulk of these possibilities. |
| > | Stabbing gets a bad rap. At half an anti-spell, it's not something you're often going to want to use, but in unusual situations it can be a good counterattack against an expected paralysis or amnesia. |
The weakness of paralysis is its overwhelming LACK of flexibility. As discussed above, F is a real tough cookie. Anyone who has used paralysis is familiar with the impossible spellflow it leaves you with. This already is a major drawback, which is only balanced out if your para chain keeps an opponent's hand in an even less useful gesture, like - or C. Even worse, but rarely recognized, is the damage that paralysis does to your spellflow when you are preparing to cast it. That second F is awful! Whether or not you complete paralysis, your opponent knows that nothing else is coming out of the FF hand for some turns. This is even worse than with other middle F's. If you gesture WPF, you can complete the spell, switch to para, or change to something else very slowly. With FF you have even fewer options. Your opponent, of course, is free to threaten and change her own spellflow as she sees fit. And your opponent gains this intelligence advantage BEFORE you get any effect from your investment into F!
The one situation where the second F is likely to be less apoplytic is in DFF. However, if your opponent is in a position to deal with DFFDD, they probably won't be too disrupted by paralysis, either.
The point of all this is that paralysis is powerful, but really only worth using in situations where it is going to accomplish something very specific for you, where another disruption won't do the trick more easily, and where you will have enough initiative left to escape from the clutches of the repeating F. For example, paralysis can often be used effectively against an Invis threat -- if your opponent tries to follow through on the threat, para will prevent both Invis and the beginning of FOD, while the W/W they entered may cost them some initiative.
When you have a paralysis chain going, you want to get out of the chain the instant it is possible to do so advantageously. The longer you linger, the more likely you are to be handing your opponent the initiative. (Obviously, but importantly, this does not apply to paralysis as combo mechanism with giants, FoD, Haste, etc.)